A “shallow pool”: Women still vastly underrepresented at the executive level

The results of the Chief Executive Women (CEW) ASX200 Senior Executive Census 2018 show gender balance is slowly heading in the right direction, but the raw numbers indicate the proportion of female to male chief executive officers is still ridiculously low.

Women in ASX200 companies hold only 7% of chief executive officer roles. That figure is up by 2% on last year, from 11 women chief executive officers in 2017 to 14 in 2018. The number of women in ASX200 executive leadership teams has also risen in the past year, from 381 to 430. The number of men in executive leadership teams also rose slightly, from 1423 to 1428.

One of the more remarkable statistics is there is only one company out of 200 that has a predominantly female executive team. Estia Health Limited has six women on its nine-person executive. There are 10 companies with 50% female representation on their executive teams.

In the introduction to the report, Kathryn Fagg, president of CEW, and Jenny Boddington, chair of the business engagement committee of CEW, said the news was not all bad: “There are some significant improvements to recognise in 2018. The number of companies with no women in the executive leadership team has almost halved in the last year, and there are increases in the number of women in chief executive officer, chief financial officer, group executive and functional roles. Read more